Lakes of Canada

Upcoming shows

“An epic rich in detail and passion, Lakes of Canada have aCanadian classic on their hands with Transgressions. 9/10″ –Exclaim!“The songs stand on their own and some, like the final title track,deserve a permanent place in the Canadian songbook.” – CBC Music“It’s a relatively trim 40 minutes of music, but covers a lot ofground, musically and emotionally.” – The Globe and Mail“The music is energetically grandiose, with choral and orchestralfolk-rock evoking the classical origins of the concept album inoratorios and orchestral tone poems.” – The National Post“It’s almost as if there’s a common, explicable, perceivable bondbetween dystopian literature and music made about a drearyfucked-up future. Maybe there is. Or maybe Lakes of Canadastumbled upon something big here.” -The Huffington Post

Founded in 2011 in Montreal, Lakes of Canada is a four pieceprogressive pop group with gospel and soul vocal harmoniesfeaturing: Jake Smith on lead vocals, guitar, keys, and percussion, Sarah Morasse on vocals, keys, percussion, and organ, Conor O’Neil on drums, vocals, and keys, and Caleb Smith on bass, keys, vocals, guitar, and percussion.Lakes of Canada has held the #2 most pretentious band in the CULT Montreal reader’s poll for 4 years running (we’re coming for you Arcade Fire). They have performed across Canada and been featured at Festivals including: POP Montreal, Canadian Music Week, Festival Folk sur la Canal, M for Montreal, NXNE, and Osheaga. In 2012 they won Best Band of the St-Ambroise Montreal Fringe Festival. Transgressions won best Traditional/Roots album at the 2016 GAMIQ awards.Conor O’Neil and Jake Smith also recently won album of the year Juno awards, and Rock Performance of the year Grammy awards for their work on Leonard Cohen’s final record You Want it Darker. Lakes of Canada released their second album, Transgressions, inspired by Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale, on October 16th, 2015, followed by a tour throughout Eastern Canada. Transgressions was produced by Jace Lasek (The Besnard Lakes, Arcade Fire, Patrick Watson, Young Galaxy) at Breakglass Studio in Montreal. They released Transgressions Acoustic in the fall of 2016 and will be releasing their third full-length album, We Will Outlive the Sun in the fall of 2018.Their debut album Toll the Bell was released in 2012.

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 The music is energetically grandiose, with choral and orchestral folk-rock evoking the classical origins of the concept album in oratorios and orchestral tone poems.

— Mike Doherty, The National Post

It’s almost as if there’s a common, explicable, perceivable bond between dystopian literature and music made about a dreary fucked-up future. Maybe there is. Or maybe Lakes of Canada stumbled upon something big here.